Parents, Get Your Kids Behind the Wheel

There has been a lot of chatter on social media about the number of teenagers today who are simply uninterested in earning their driver’s licenses. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 that while nearly half of 16-year-olds were driving in the 1980s, just a quarter were by 2017. Data from the Federal Highway Administration present a similar trend showing that 46 percent of eligible 16-year-olds in 1983 earned their licenses. By 2018, that figure dropped to 26 percent. The data on teen driving is not entirely consistent across sources, but there is a clear decline.

While numerous possible explanations have been offered for this change, what needs to be highlighted are the consequences of not driving, like the fact that teens today are losing agency and serendipity in their lives by not driving themselves.

When I was 16, I could not wait to learn to drive. As a member of Gen X, I lived at the beginning of the cell phone era, when satellite navigation was not available to the general public, text messaging and the internet was just emerging. When I needed to plan a trip, I would visit AAA and get maps and “TripTiks.” When I would drive, I would be offline and focused on the road and the world around me. Without GPS, I had incredible freedom to stop anywhere and look at countless attractions, places, and anything that sparked my curiosity. I could, and would, get lost as I was trying to make sense of the sights and sounds around me. It was thrilling, exhilarating, and occasionally a bit scary.

So many of my favorite memories involved taking road trips with friends and family to explore various places. And the destination was only part of the fun; the drive was a major part of the experience. On a college trip to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, friends and I randomly stopped for date shakes and could smell the intense odors from Central Valley cow farms; these were two unplanned experiences that are hard to forget. When I first started dating my wife, we would drive to various destinations on weekends—serendipitously exploring the New England coast and having the freedom to see a sign or something in a guidebook and just go. We had the true freedom to explore, and the open road was thrilling and enticing.

Sadly, many of today’s teens miss these experiences. By literally being passengers rather than drivers, Gen Zers are increasingly being passive in the world around them. Gen Z has grown up in a world of pandemic lockdowns and have lived so much of their lives through screens. Smartphones and other technologies deeply influence where they want to go and often provide directions and even the transportation. But, for Gen Zers, going the wrong way, getting lost, the mystery of the unknown, and the thrill of exploring without a mapping program have all but disappeared.

Having apps that effectively shuttle people from point A to point B certainly enables mobility without knowing how to drive, but these apps keep Gen Zers cocooned and isolated from the real world and authentic experiences. Driving can help one understand a place and the space within, so it is no wonder so many in Gen Z feel disconnected from their neighborhoods. Moreover, the apps have fundamentally changed the dynamics of dating—imagine dating with an Uber driver in the front of the car—and have altered how younger Americans “hang out” and go out with their friends as well. The classic opening scene in Wayne’s World of five teens singing in the car to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the centrality of the scene representing real connection in suburbia may be totally lost on many in Gen Z today.

Of course, none of this is to say that there is no real value to digital products and technology like ride apps, nor that not having a license and using alternatives to travel does not have value. However, collectively, Gen Zers have become passive and they are, understandably, the loneliest generation. The data show that today’s parents and grandparents are at least twice as likely to believe that responsible citizenship requires both community and electoral engagement—a lesson apparently lost on many members of Gen Z. It is worthwhile for members of Gen Z to learn how to drive, get on the road, and look out the front window and sit behind the wheel rather than their screens—they may love the thrill of exploring, being spontaneous, and having agency; they may feel far less lonely as they connect more closely with the places and spaces that they are actually in along the way too.